Understanding hardware and software prerequisites

Many problems in Siebel CRM projects arise from improper planning. As we learned, delivering a decent planning document is a key milestone of our Siebel CRM implementation project.

The success of the installation process we will start in the next chapter relies on the correct installation of third-party software on the correct hardware.

Therefore, it is very important that any person involved in planning and conducting a Siebel CRM installation has access to the Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms document that can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology Network website: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11886_01/srsphomepage.html.

This document is available for each individual Siebel CRM version and outlines in detail the minimum hardware requirements and software prerequisites.

For example, if we plan to provide a prototype environment for evaluation and testing of Siebel CRM 8.1 and would like to use Microsoft Windows Server 2003 as the operating system, we would have to provision hardware and software as follows:

(Source: Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms, Version 8.1)

If we were to install these components on a single piece of hardware, we would have to provision a 4 CPU unit (2 for the Siebel Server, 1 for the Siebel Gateway Name Server, and 1 for the Web Server) with at least 1.7 GB (1 GB plus 256 MB + 512 MB) of free memory for the Siebel components, which would be a physical minimum of 2 GB of memory as the operating system will also be hungry for memory.